In a small or home office, you’ll probably need to print, scan, copy and fax during day-to-day business. Brother has a range of printers that can do these things and the MFC-7460DN sits in the middle of the range, offering a couple of important extras over its stablemate, the MFC-7360N, which we reviewed a few weeks back.

Coloured in shades of light and dark grey, the machine is little bigger than the mono laser printer on which it's based and a slight flare to its waste is the only allowance that needs making for the scanner and its 35-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF). A folding feed tray and paper stop helps to complete the neat lines of the machine when not in use.

The control panel is logically laid out with buttons grouped into functional units. At the left-hand end are four quick-dial buttons, which double up to eight using a shift key. Next along are parameter selectors for fax, copy and print modes and underneath the rather dim 2-line by 16-character LCD display panel in the centre of the keyboard are three illuminated buttons to switch between modes.

Moving further right is a diamond of menu navigation keys and a number pad for fax number entry, with start and stop buttons at the extreme right. It's disappointing there's no front panel USB socket for printing from or scanning to USB drives.

There is, however, a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom of the machine with a flip-down single-sheet feed for printing special media, directly above. At the back are sockets for USB and 10/100 Ethernet, though there's no wireless provision on this machine.

Brother includes a good software bundle with this printer, including Nuance PaperPort and its own MFL-Pro Suite. Consumables comprise a two-part drum and toner cartridge, where the toner is available in 1,200 and 2,600 page yields, while the drum should last for 12,000 pages. This unit slides in from the front, once you've folded down the top part of the front panel to provide access.